January 24, 2005

It's Just A Plant: A Book to Explain Marijuana To Your Kids

She smelled something funny in the air,
so she walked down the hall to her parents' bedroom"

From the book's website, where you can order It's Just A Plant at a special pre-publication price: "Many parents are not comfortable discussing marijuana use beyond 'just say no.' Some have tried marijuana themselves. Others fear that any discussion of marijuana falling short of outright denouncement may be perceived by their children as permission to try it on their own. In short, parents have few sources of information that puts the safety of their kids before politics...

It's Just a Plant is for parents who want to be involved in discussing and educating their children about the effects, the dangers and the benefits of marijuana."

Now I'm not a smoker of anything, nor even an eater of magic brownies, so I'll let you high flyers out there wrestle with this one on your own. Meanwhile, be sure to let me know when they come out with It's Just A Drink: Explaining Diet Coke To Your Children.

Yes it is just a plant. However, the thing you're forgetting is that unlike Cannabis, cocaine and heroin are chemically processed into much more powerful (and dangerous) substances. Coca leaves contain many psychotropic substances other than cocaine. Many of these other substances regulate and mediate the effect of cocaine in the body. Processed, concentrated cocaine discards these other chemicals and their contributing effects. The opium poppy produces opium. The opium is processed into morphine and then subsequently s methyl group is added yielding heroin. Alcohol (ethanol) is not readily found in nature and is virtually never found in its concentrated form. Cigarettes contain many adulterants that increase both its psychotropic and addictive properties. Note that over 430,000 die directly from cigarettes annually, over 85,000 die directly from ethanol and ALL illicit drugs use combined both DIRECT and INDIRECT causes is around 17,000 ˝ Marijuana 0 usage deaths. Note that most of the deaths are due to the pressures that prohibition causes. I.E. No control of drug quality or purity, turf wars, dispute settlement between the businesses, collateral damage from the warriors themselves (go here to see a few stories http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2003/08/17/drugWarVictims.html) and above all else easy access to all of these substances by our children.

No one is in favor of minors using any psychotropic substances for the obvious reasons. Understand that our current prohibition does far more harm to cannabis users that the substance ever has or could. These policies directly put our kids in harms way. For a realistic analysis of the governments own data go to www.briancbennett.com. I found this link off of the home page of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP ˝ www.leap.cc) The Brian Bennett site shocked me; it is a real eye opener vis-ř-vis what were constantly hearing in the major media.

No one is able to identify the ýcasualtiesţ from this plants use other than the damage that our policies create. If it is truly damaging and dangerous then why donÝt we have a health epidemic (we have millions cannabis users) of large proportions supporting the (bogus) claims?

Please start from square one and educate yourself so that you can see through the propaganda that has been fed to us for almost 100 years now. Learn to think independently and you'll come to understand what cannabis is - a benign plant with no toxic overdose level and thousands of years of proven usefulness. No drug is entirely safe, this includes cannabis.

Get educated. Know Truth. Spread the Truth.

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